In this course, author Jan Kabili introduces the photo organizing, editing, and sharing features of Adobe Photoshop Elements 12, the less expensive version of Photoshop that is ideal for casual photographers who want to achieve professional results. First, Jan covers importing, organizing, and finding photos with the Organizer. Then she explains how and when to use each of the editing workspaces—from Quick Edit to Expert Edit—and make color corrections, retouch blemishes, composite images, and more. The final chapter offers creative ways to share photos with Elements, including print projects like greeting cards, calendars, and books; email photos; and post them on Facebook and Flickr.

Elements overview

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a one stop shop, formost anything that you'll want to do to your photos.It's not only a useful photo editor, it's also a photo organizer, a creative workspace and a jumping off place forsharing photos online and among your mobile devices.You'll use different elements work spaces, dependingon which of those tasks you're doing.So, we're going to start off the course withan overview of the work spaces you'll use most.First, when you launch the program, this is the screen that you'll see.This is the welcome screen.And from here you can quickly access the twomain parts of elements, which are the organizer, whereyou'll go to manage and search for and viewthumbnails of all your photos, and the photo editor.

Where of course, you'll go to edit your photos.The welcome screen also offers information and links about Elements.Now if you don't want to see welcome screen every time you open the program,you can go to this gear icon at the top of the welcome screen.And from there, you can use to start on launcheither at the welcome screen, the organizer or the photo editor.I'll leave this set to welcome screen for now, and I'll click Done.Now you can start working directly in the PhotoEditor, but if you choose to use Elements Organizerto keep track of and manage your photos, thenyou'll most often want to start in the Organizer.

And that's what I'm going to do now by clicking the Organizerbutton, here in the Welcome screen.That opens the organizer to its default view, media view.You can see that the media tab is selected by default at the top of the organizer.In media view, you'll see thumbnail sized copies of eachof the photos that you choose to import into the organizer.I'll show you how to import files into your organizer shortly.You can import not only photos, which we'll beconcentrating on in this course, but also audio clips.And you can see some thumbnails foraudio clips down here, as well asvideo clips, PDFs and special Elements project files.

The photos that you see here, are not in the Exercise Files.These are my personal photos that I'm using just for purposes of this movie.We'll be talking a lot about things that you cando to organize and find photos here in the organizer.One of the things that I often do in the organizer, is to browse throughmy photos to find those that I want to take over to the editor for photo editing.So let's say that I want to edit this photo.I'll click on it to select and this photo.I'll hold the control key, the command key on the Macand click on this photo to add it to the selection.And, then to bring those two photos into the Editor, I'll go downto the bar at the bottom of the organizer called the Task Pane.

And, in the Task Pane I'll click the Editor icon.That launches Elements editor, which is a separate program.So, it make take a few minutes to launch.I'd like to maximize the editor on my screen.So, I'm going to go to the Maximize button at the top right onwindows, or the green button at the top left on a MAC and click there.If I go down to the bottom of the editor, there is a Task panesimilar to the Task pane that we saw in the Organizer, but with different icons.I'm going to click on the very first icon, the Photo Bin icon to showyou that both of the files that I'd selected in the Organizer are now openhere in the editor.

And I can choose to work on a different fileby just double clicking its thumbnail here in the Photo Bin.There are three separate editing workspaces in the Editor, thatvary in complexity, and in the features that they offer.A good place to start is the Quick Edit workspace.Which offers some ways to quickly apply common photo adjustments to your photos.And we'll be looking at how to do that later in the course too.If you like to follow instructions orrecipes when you're correcting photos, thenyou may prefer the Guided edit workspace.I can quickly take both of these photos into the Guided editworkspace by just clicking the Guided button at the top of the editor.

And if I go down to the bottom of Guided Edit andclick Photo Bin, you'll see that both photos are available here as well.And I can choose to edit either one.Over on the right side of the guidededit work space are recipes for common photo corections.And we'llbe looking at a few of these later in the course too.And finally, there is the Expert Edit Work space, which I canaccess by clicking the Expert button at the top of the Editor.And again, there's a photo bin, displaying all the open files.Now honestly, you don't need to be an expertat photo editing, to use the Expert Edit Workspace.

I'll be showing you some of the many ways that youcan make your photos look great, in this full featured editing workspace.Which, by the way, looks a lot likeAdobe Photoshop and shares many of the same features that Photoshop has.When you're finished editing your photos in the Editor,you want to save any changes you've made and close them.To close a photo from the Expert Edit Workspace, I'll go to the tab fora particular photo at the top of the document window and click the X there.If I'm in either of the other two work spaces, Guidedor Quick Edit, then to close a photo, I'll click theX at the top right of the document window.

I'm not going to close this photo for now, because I want to show you what happensif I leave a photo open in the Editor and I switch back to the Organizer.To get back to the Organizer from any of the three editing workspaces, I can godown to the Task pane at the bottom of the Editor, and click the Organizer button.Here in the Organizer, you can see that the photothat is still open in the Editor has a red baracross it and a lock, and that means that I cant workwith it here in the Organizer while its still open in the Editor.So if I need to do something with it here in the Organizer,I would have to click on the photo to select only that photo.

And then go down and click on Editor inthe Task pane again, to switch back to the Editor.Close the photo there.I'll click the X at the top right of the Quick Edit workspace todo that, and that takes me back to the Organizer, because there are noother photos open in the Editor.And you see that the red bar and lock are gone from that photo.I'll click into a gray area of media view to remove the highlights in that photo.So those are the workspaces that I think you'll use mostoften, with some information about how to move your photos between them.There are other workspaces too.

For example at the top of the Organizer in whichyou can organize your photos of people, places and events.And over on the right side of either the Organizer orthe Editor, you can access various workspaces formaking photo creations like prints, photo books and more.As well as features for sharing your photos, by email and online.So that's an overview of the major workspaces in Elements.I'll be covering lots more about theOrganizer and the Editor throughout the course.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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